Synopsis

During Japan's Sengoku period, several powerful warlords fought in politics and in arms with hopes of unifying the country under a central government. Nobunaga Oda had asserted himself as being the most powerful of these rulers by possessing the strength and military resource necessary to conquer all of Japan.

Shingen Takeda and his trusted warrior Yukimura Sanada led one of the main clans standing in Nobunaga’s way. One night, Sanada had been ordered to lead a sneak attack against General Kenshin Uesugi, which was then thwarted by Masamune Date and his army. Sanada and Date fought to a draw, which forged a heated rivalry out of their newfound admiration for one another.

Nobunaga continues to exert his forces in Sengoku Basara by doubling down on his influence across the country. Sanada and Date find themselves having to put their differences aside in order to quell the rise of Nobunaga and save feudal Japan from his tyrannical reign. Magical, militant, and political powers fly forth as these warriors and leaders clash amongst themselves and the armies of Nobunaga.

Background

Sengoku Basara is a heavily fictionalized account of the Sengoku period of Japanese history, with the series specifically focusing on the later years of this era. Many of the characters in the series are based on historical figures, although numerous changes have been made to their histories and personal relationships.

Story.
It's very simple and easy to understand, it's far from being complex and it doesn't try to be. Characters are introduced in a battle with minimal background information.
However, the timesetting and some of the elements that appear are a bit odd but they were added to make it look even better. You shouldn't think of this as a historical anime or you won't like it.

Art.
I liked the art, it looked nice, and the effects used during combat scenes added an extra touch to it.

Sound.
Intro and endings were nice and I was never once disturbed by the background music meaning they did a good job. Use
the music to magnify the events that are taking place and focus your attention on that and not on the music playing.

Character.
I have no idea how well they match the historical people that they were based on but each was interesting in its own way. Also the fact that while they all liked and respected each other, they still fought each other was something refreshing. They somewhat match the general idea one would have from that time. And some of them were given elements from the current time to amplify their personality. Like date's horse that looked like a motorcycle, the yakuza like army...

Enjoyment.
The whole show wasn't made to improve your knowledge of that time or anything like that. It was made for pure enjoyment. If you like some epic battles without complex background information and such, this might be the show for you. Since the series is only 12 episodes long, the story doesn't have time for sidestories, detailed backgrounds,.. I liked this series so much because I could just watch and enjoy without having to think over some things.

Overall.
I liked the series, If you want a good short action serie. This is your thing. Don't be fooled by the historical tag, It might've been based on that but I wouldn't study for a history exam with this or you will fail. If you ever liked bleach, naruto,.. but you hated the fillers, the dramatic flashbacks in the past to explain something and just wished they'd get on with the battle. Then watch this for a few hours of simple enjoyment.

Sengoku Basara is a shōnen anime set during the Sengoku Jidai, or ‘Warring States period’ of Japanese history, and is based on Capcom’s Playstation 2 video game Devil Kings (known as Sengoku Basara in Japan). It should be noted that Sengoku Basara is a world away from the period it draws its inspiration from – it's not historically accurate by any means. That said, a few features associated with the period, such as the rivalry between Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin, and the Oda clan’s use of firearms, are present. The characters, for the most part, are all taken from the era, although the manner
in which they are presented is obviously highly fictionalized.

Sengoku Basara is a fairly typical tale of good versus evil. Initially it may not seem so simple, as we are presented with many factions fighting for control over Japan. Eventually though, they come together to fight a common enemy; namely, Oda Nobunaga. As in Capcom’s Onimusha franchise, he is presented as some sort of demon. Overall, the story certainly isn't anything to write home about. Spanning a total of 12 episodes, the series does a decent job of wrapping things up within its time limit, although it can feel rushed at times.

As you can probably tell from the poster, there are a lot of characters in Sengoku Basara. For an anime of its length, this isn’t something that works to its advantage. Perhaps inevitably, character development is not one of its strong points, and this is one area where the anime can seem rushed. This is a shame, as we are introduced to several interesting characters such as Chōsokabe Motochika, the so called 'Demon of Onigashima', only for them to receive almost no screen time whatsoever (other than as forgettable reinforcements during the final battle). Equally disappointing is the fact that some of the characters that do feature heavily aren't given any significant fights of their own. You may find yourself waiting for a confrontation between a pair of characters, only to be disappointed when it never happens.

The characters themselves are a varied bunch, with Date Masamune being perhaps the most interesting. Arrogant with the strength to back it up and full of ridiculous one liners like ‘put ya guns on!’, it’s no surprise that he has been likened to Dante, the protagonist of Capcom’s Devil May Cry franchise. He also incorporates English into his speech, which is refreshing. Other characters, however, don't fare as well. Listening to Yukimura as he constantly reminds us that he’s burning with passion, for example, can quickly become tiresome.

An anime set during times of war, it's no surprise that most of the enjoyment from this series comes from its many over-the-top action sequences: one swing of an axe causing a tornado; a robot samurai with a jet pack and a massive drill for a weapon; and so on.

One final thing to note about Sengoku Basara (for you blood and gore enthusiasts) is that the violence is pretty modest - even by shōnen standards. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any deaths! Of course, if this sort of stuff doesn't bother you in the slightest, you'll be fine.

Summary:

+ Interesting presentation of the Warring States period. If you know a thing or two about the period, you're likely to squeeze more enjoyment out of it (unless historical inaccuracies put you off).

+/- Series is short in length but has a large, varied cast of characters. As a result, character development isn't a highlight.

- A few annoying characters that you'll have to tolerate (subjective, depending on what you're definition of annoying is).

+/- Rather modest levels of violence.

Conclusion:

Overall, Sengoku Basara is OK. Some of its characters may be annoying, character development isn’t great, and the final confrontation arguably leaves much to be desired. However, I'm sure many will find it entertaining. Generally speaking, if you think the idea of a guy wielding six swords simultaneously (only two hands!) is just plain awesome, you should probably give this one a try.

Sengoku BASARA tells the story of fighting countries in an ancient Japan, no, let me rephrase that, it's about lords of countries fighting eachother for power. One of these lords called the devil king of the sixth heaven, note that he's a DEVIL king of the sixth HEAVEN this alone should keep you away from this anime, gained enough power to pose a real threat to the other lords as he ravaged all the lands that stood against him and also the lands that were his allies. Basically this is one crazy devil king of the sixth heaven.

The thing is, he is depicted as
an evil lord doing evil things in this time of evil, but everyone else are the same. They all want to fight eachother and some of the "good" guys actually look forward to fighting eachother for no apparent reason other than that they respect eachother, atleast the devil king of the sixth heaven does it for his own perverse enjoyment.

You might have been able to think that was cool, you might have been able to think any of the characters were cool, if they had possessed anything worthy of being called cool. They were all overplayed, not your regular overplayed, this was really bad. The producers insult the viewers and furthermore insult the main target audience which in this case would be shounen (teenage boys).

I've seen this anime been compared to TTGL. This is an abomination of epic proportions. Where TTGL knows how to play the characters for maximum entertainment this anime fails miserably.

Still, the art and animations were good. Some of the fight scenes were well made and for this it retained some entertainment value which saved it from a rating of below 5.

If you want a short shounen that insults you with its characters but tries to entertain you with fairly well made scenes of fighting then you should definitely watch Sengoku BASARA, if you want a good samurai/historical anime go watch Samurai Champloo.

Sengoku Basara is a relatively modern anime series created by Production I.G, and is based on the series of videogames of the same name in Japan. Despite some historical accuracy as pertaining to the key battles in the Sengoku period, the series takes many departures from the trappings of the period and introduces many outlandish elements, an example being Honda, a gigantic mechanical soldier introduced roughly halfway through the series. This over-the-top approach to Japanese history, however, does not exactly result in a work of great praise. (Note that I myself have not played any of the Sengoku Basara games, so this review is only
based off the anime series itself, I have no bias towards the series itself)

The storyline and plot development of Sengoku Basara is barely worth mentioning – it is barely developed whatsoever, and the skimming over of the events of the period made trying to follow such an unexplained story fairly confusing for someone like me, who does not know much about the events of the Sengoku Period themselves. It becomes obvious that the bare threads of story only serve to connect the fights of the series, and this in turn contributes to the rushed feeling of the series itself. The basic time-worn concept of good vs. evil presents the main plot of the series, a very stereotypical goal for the demographic.

The cast of characters for the series is quite large, surprising considering the fairly short length of the series itself, and because of this large cast/short series imbalance, character development is practically paper thin. Some characters only show up for one episode or so before being offed, or in some cases, only appear for two or three moments in the series, despite being seemingly interesting characters (prime suspects for this being Mouri Motonari and Chousokabe Motochika, the latter only being revealed at the end of the series and basically has around 5 minutes of screentime in total). Also, opposite to the above point, several characters that are featured prominently in the series have barely any interesting fight scenes or development whatsoever (prime examples being Sarutobi Sasuke and Kasuga). This presents a very ‘half-finished’ view on the character development of the series, which is never a good thing. Despite this, however, there are some characters that are developed more than others, such as Date Masamune or Yukimura Sanada, for example, but these characters still are not developed very much, and their dialogue mostly delves into a sea of predictable phrases later on in the series. Interactions between characters are fairly unremarkable, unless they are fighting between each other, and many of the ‘gags’ that occur throughout the series (such as Yukimura’s exchanges with Takeda Shingen, or Kasuga’s interaction with Uesugi Kenshin) are very repetitive and don’t really add much whatsoever, they just end up being fairly silly and irritating as time goes by.

It is clear from the very first episode that the primary focus of Sengoku Basara is with its action scenes, something which the war-time setting caters to greatly. However, many battles simply degrade into one of the main characters using some kind of absurdly powerful attack to tear through legions of nameless weak soldiers, and this does become repetitive quickly. Despite this, the majority of the battles take place between the main protagonists and antagonists of the series themselves, and these battles can sometimes be fairly fun to watch, but most delve into the limitless vault of shonen series tropes such as powering up/energy blasts etc., which really hampers the uniqueness of the fights, even if interesting elements are involved.

Visual direction of the series is quite well done, the fight scenes are fluid and transition well, and generally in itself the animation is quite detailed. Frequent splashes of colour and sketching effect are used very liberally throughout the series, to highlight the flashy special moves that the characters exhibit, which is somewhat interesting at first but is not particularly explored. There is a surprising lack of blood, even for a shonen series of this kind, which does make the battles somewhat disappointing to watch.

Audio wise the series does not present a particularly memorable soundtrack, most of the series’ background music consists of either stereotypically created hard rock tracks for the fight scenes or somewhat traditional sounding music for the scenes that were not taken up by fighting, which is not very many whatsoever. The opening and ending themes are also fairly unmemorable rock pieces which contributed to the series’ tone itself in principle, but really were not notable in any other merit.

In conclusion, Sengoku Basara is a very average and overrated series. A lack of coherent story beyond an excuse for characters to fight, poor overall character development due to a large cast and not enough screentime, subpar and derivative action sequences with too much incessant energy blasts/special attacks, a fairly unremarkable soundtrack and a lack of veritable historical accuracy for the period translates to a measly 5/10. Some may find this entertaining as merely a baseless and flashy piece of media, but these features should not be treated as compliments.

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